The Aardvark Blog

Great Valentine's Day, Cimarosa, Friday Night Lights, Exciting News of Aardvark Appointment
16/02/2016

Thank you again to Gareth Rees-Roberts, Annie Thompson, and the Aardvark team for their hard work on Sunday's Valentine's market. A cold but sunny day brought out lots of people, and they heard Gareth play a wonderful suite of Latin American guitar music (I am afraid he told me the composers, but I foolishly did not write them down). Overall a great start to our events programme for the year.

Of late Mr Aardvark has been showing his increasing decrepitude by bemoaning the fatuousisation of Radio 3, and the depths of depravity that are plumbed by 'Essential Classics' in particular (even writing the words makes my fingers shake). And then driving yesterday I heard the most engaging feature on their composer of the week Domenico Cimarosa and it made me remember again why I love Radio 3 so much. I am not sure if this programme is available on listen-again, but I gather there are more programmes on Cimarosa to come, so try to catch at least one.

Last night Sarah and I watched the last two episodes of 'Friday Night Lights', a wonderful American series that is available from Netflix (and I believe Amazon Prime). I have already watched the series once, and it is a testament to its brilliance that I found myself fully engaged once more. TV addicts have many discussions of the best ever series - usually led by Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, the Wire or The Sopranos - but in my opinion no series is better than FNL. Across 5 very different series, characters were developed, the plot moved on in thoughtful and non-sensational ways, the millieu and issues of class and race delicately explored. It is an ensemble piece with wonderful performances throughout - many of them from young actors. If you haven't yet watched it I would urge you to do so - even if you have no interest in sport or small town America.

Finally after some weeks of searching, we have finally appointed a replacement to Holly who is leaving at the end of this month. Lucie will be joining us in March and will be here 5 days a week overseeing our order processing, bookshop development and customer orders. Lucie worked for us some years ago when we were in the arctic wastes of Oxford Barn, and has a great familiarity with our main computer programme Monsoon. Since she has left us she has worked for a number of businesses and has picked up many skills and experiences that will be very useful to us moving forward. I would like to thank all those who applied for the position - we really had some very impressive other candidates.